eBox Packages Linux LAN Services in a Friendly Bundle

Complexity Made Manageable

"A very complex technology to make network management simple." That's what the
developers of the eBox platform promise small and medium sized organizations, and it's
certainly an attractive idea.

It starts from the premise that all the software you need to run a network is
available as open-source, but that getting all that software configured and running
together can be quite tricky. So what if there was a management application with a simple
web-based GUI that could install all the necessary software and do all the configuration
and integration for you with just a handful of mouse clicks?

The eBox platform is designed to do exactly that, allowing "non-expert" administrators
to configure and run network services including:

The good news is that the eBox platform is completely open-source, licensed under the
GPL and free to download, with an active community developing
it and driving the project forward. The open-source software it controls includes:

OpenLDAP and Samba for user management (eBox also includes a
primary domain controller to allow Windows machines to authenticate). Samba and
CUPS for file and printer sharing and backup on a Window network. Postfix,
SpamAssassin, ClamAV and Jabber to run an e-mail server with anti-spam and
anti-virus software and a corporate Jabber-based instant messaging system. Squid,
Dansguardian, Netfilter/Iptables and Iproute2 to run a firewall, with packet
filtering, traffic shaping, and web content filtering. ISC DHCP, NTP. BIND, Apache,
OpenSSL and OpenVPN to run network services like DHCP, DNS and NTP, a web
server, and a VPN to connect roaming users to the network or to connect two office
networks together.

eBox is built in a modular fashion, so it is only necessary to install the modules
controlling the services you are interested in running.